Sins of youth (4)

My dancing girl

All the ferroviphiles (French for Railway Amateurs)
know that the dancers are the Alsthom BB with single-motor bogie, series
16500, 17000, 8500, 25500, etc., because they are somewhat prone to
dancing on the track!

My dancer’s first name is BB 16794. We met for the first time in
Paris-Nord station on a beautiful spring day 1967, waiting for the train
to take us home. The idyll was short: this train started a quarter of an
hour later.

My dancer was not very beautiful, short-legged, with a flat face.
Everything to be jealous of its sister 16000. But, as an advertisement
says, for once I think intelligent: if you don’t like your defects,
someone will like them for you. Plus, it was the youngest of the
family!

First portrait

Here is a first document dated 1968, but which certainly evolved over
a few years. There are various gear box drawings, one of Picasso Jouef
style, the other with transverse motor (I think it was a Nanoperm found
in an RC model catalogue). You will notice the very high placed pivot point
which would have absolutely required low traction bars; otherwise,
rearing and insured derailments!

We also see on this drawing a lighting by luciol lamps, still
used today by Roco! There is an accumulator battery in the transformer
trough, and a draft study of motorized pantographs. There are sometimes
obsessions…

Other study of a gearbox

Here is another gearbox project, based on a worm from a Joustra
Boeing 707 with friction mechanism: this worm gear was therefore
reversible (not self-locking) to allow launching the engine flywheel,
that’s why it had three threads. But it gave an insufficient reduction;
I therefore added a stage with spur gears.

At the time, I did not know yet the graphic gear representation! I
don’t tell you the time spent drawing all that! And we still find the
little “tournebroche” motor Jouef, the same as in the
Record 64 slot cars!
I doubt it could have driven the machine. As for the worm, I still own
it: actual technological relic!

Portrait in majesty

Here is at last the most precise diagram I have ever drawn of this
mythical (for me!) loco. The original is in A3 size.

Hey! I just noticed that I deprived the loco of its corner windows. It
means that I was then aware of the cabin modifications operated on these
locomotives. The date of drawing must therefore be around 1972.